Skype Holds 8% Market Share, Becomes World's Largest Provider Of Long Distance Communications

According to telecommunications market researcher TeleGeography VoIP provider Skype now holds an impressive 8% market share of the world's long distance calling making the company the world's largest provider of long distance communications.

Skype showed an increase of 41 percent over a year earlier overall accounting for around 33 billion minutes of international voice calls.

"Skype's traffic growth has been remarkable," TeleGeography analyst Stephan Becket said in a statement. "Only five years after its launch, Skype has emerged as the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world."

Of the 33 billion minutes used roughly 25 billion are free "Skype-to-Skype" traffic with roughly 8 billion minutes coming as part of the paid "Skype Out" service. This has resulted in a lack of revenue growth for the company that is currently owned by eBay. eBay bought the company back in 2005 amidst skepticism over the meshing of the two companies.




Skype's president, Josh Silverman, said Skype had posted a 20 percent net income last year, on $550 million in sales in 2008. Silverman predicted that the calling service's sales would more than double to more than $1 billion in 2011.

The company, which has largerly target home users, is now seeking to expand into the business market with the recent announcement of the SkypeSIP Beta. SIP, short for Session Initiation Protocol, is an open standard and the leading voice over Internet protocol used in businesses telephony networks at millions of locations globally. Skype For SIP allows SIP PBX owners to benefit from Skype's low cost calls to fixed phones and mobiles around the world, and to receive calls from Skype users directly into their PBX system.